The world may not be running out of cocoa farmers after all

KIT research: Cocoa remains attractive to farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana despite reports its time is up

Media reports have cast cocoa as a doomed crop cultivated by aging farmers and shunned by younger generations, which may lead to chocolate shortages.

However, research by KIT (Dutch Royal Tropical Institute) suggests we are not close to a tipping-point for cocoa. The study was conducted by Roger Bymolt, Anna Laven, Cedric Steijn and Marcelo Tyszler. The study and full dataset will enter the public domain at the World Cocoa Conference in Berlin next month. The study, "Demystifying the cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana" conducted surveys in 37 communities in Ghana and 37 in Cote d'Ivoire with around 3,000 households and held focus groups with farmers. "The study suggests that the world is not running out of cocoa farmers,"" Anna Laven, senior advisor at KIT, told ConfectioneryNews.

Financial support for the independent KIT research was supported by Lindt, UTZ, the German Initiative on Sustainable Cocoa, CIRAD, Sudwind, IDH and the Jacobs Foundation.